Files From Duke Rape Case Give Details but No Answers

By DUFF WILSON and JONATHAN D. GLATER

Published: August 25, 2006

CORRECTION APPENDED

On March 21, a week after an African-American woman charged that she had been raped by three white Duke University lacrosse players, the police sergeant supervising the investigation met with the sexual-assault nurse who had examined the woman in the emergency room. The sergeant, Mark D. Gottlieb, reviewed the medical report, which did not say much: some swelling, no visible bruises.

But the sergeant's case notes also recount what the nurse told him in response to his questions: that the woman appeared to be in so much pain that it took ''an extended period of time'' to examine her, and that the ''blunt force trauma'' seen in the examination ''was consistent with the sexual assault that was alleged by the victim.''

About a week later, the sergeant met with the Durham County district attorney to go over the case. For several days, the prosecutor, Michael B. Nifong, had been beseeching Duke lacrosse players to break their ''stonewall of silence'' about what had happened at a team party on March 13. Now, he turned up the pressure, telling Fox News that there was ''no doubt in my mind that she was raped.''

Whether the woman was in fact raped is the question at the center of a case that has become a national cause c?bre, yet another painful chapter in the tangled American opera of race, sex and privilege. Defense lawyers, amplified by Duke alumni and a group of bloggers who have closely followed the case, have portrayed it as a national scandal -- that there is only the flimsiest physical evidence of rape, that the accuser is an unstable fabricator, and that Mr. Nifong, in the middle of a tight primary campaign, was summoning racial ghosts for political gain.

By disclosing pieces of evidence favorable to the defendants, the defense has created an image of a case heading for the rocks. But an examination of the entire 1,850 pages of evidence gathered by the prosecution in the four months after the accusation yields a more ambiguous picture. It shows that while there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong's case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury.

Crucial to that portrait of the case are Sergeant Gottlieb's 33 pages of typed notes and 3 pages of handwritten notes, which have not previously been revealed. His file was delivered to the defense on July 17, making it the last of three batches of investigators' notes, medical reports, statements and other evidence shared with the defense under North Carolina's pretrial discovery rules.

In several important areas, the full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense:

Defense lawyers have argued that the written medical reports do not support the charge of rape. But in addition to the nurse's oral description of injuries consistent with the allegation, Sergeant Gottlieb writes that the accuser appeared to be in extreme pain when he interviewed her two and a half days after the incident, and that signs of bruises emerged then as well.

The defense has argued that the accuser gave many divergent versions of events that night, and she did in fact give differing accounts of who did what at the party. But the files show that aside from two brief early conversations with the police, she gave largely consistent accounts of being raped by three men in a bathroom.

As recounted in one investigator's notes, one of the indicted players does not match the accuser's initial physical descriptions of her attackers: she said all three were chubby or heavyset, but one is tall and skinny. In Sergeant Gottlieb's version of the same conversation, however, her descriptions closely correspond to the defendants.

The sergeant's notes are drawing intense scrutiny from defense lawyers both because they appear to strengthen Mr. Nifong's case and because they were not turned over by the prosecution until after the defense had made much of the gaps in the earlier evidence.

Joseph B. Cheshire, a lawyer for David Evans, one of the defendants, called Sergeant Gottlieb's report a ''make-up document.'' He said Sergeant Gottlieb had told defense lawyers that he took few handwritten notes, relying instead on his memory and other officers' notes to write entries in his chronological report of the investigation.

Mr. Cheshire said the sergeant's report was ''transparently written to try to make up for holes in the prosecution's case.'' He added, ''It smacks of almost desperation.''

A review of all of the evidence underscores the major problems with the case:

There is no DNA evidence directly linking the suspects to the accuser.

The array of photographs used to identify the suspects violated generally accepted guidelines for lineups, because it included only lacrosse team members. Defense lawyers have challenged it in court, arguing that all evidence that followed from the identifications should be thrown out.

One suspect, Reade Seligmann, has what appears to be a powerful alibi, based on a cellphone log and other records that show he left the party early.

Finally, no one, not even the second dancer at the party, has corroborated the rape charge made by the woman, whose troubled personal history is sure to be an issue at trial.

Correction: August 26, 2006, Saturday
A front-page article yesterday about evidence in the case of three Duke University lacrosse players charged with rape misattributed a criticism of the method used to identify possible suspects. Lawyers for the defendant Reade Seligmann -- not for the defendant David Evans -- said the process was ''a multiple-choice test with no wrong answers, a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey identification.''

Correction: September 6, 2006, Wednesday
A front-page article on Aug. 25 about evidence in the case of three Duke University lacrosse players charged with rape misstated the number of people the accuser identified from photographs as having attended a team party where she said she was attacked. When she was shown pictures of 24 team members two and a half days after the party, she said she thought five of them, not four, were at the party.